The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

by Elizabeth George

  “Have mercy on me, O God, after thy great goodness,” Rowles read, raising his voice to be heard above the condemned man’s shrieks to be let off. “According to the multitude of thy mercies, do away with mine offenses.”

  When Trusdale saw House take the black hood out of his belt, he began to pant like a dog. He shook his head from side to side, trying to dodge the hood. His hair flew. House followed each jerk patiently, like a man who means to bridle a skittish horse.

  “Let me look at the mountains!” Trusdale bellowed. Runners of snot hung from his nostrils. “I’ll be good if you let me look at the mountains one more time!”

  But House only jammed the hood over Trusdale’s head and pulled it down to his shaking shoulders. Pastor Rowles was droning on, and Trusdale tried to run off the trapdoor. Barclay and Fisher pushed him back onto it. Down below, someone cried, “Ride ’em, cowboy!”

  “Say amen,” Barclay told Pastor Rowles. “For Christ’s sake, say amen.”

  “Amen,” Pastor Rowles said, and stepped back, closing his Bible with a clap.

  Barclay nodded to House. House pulled the lever. The greased beam retracted and the trap dropped. So did Trusdale. There was a crack when his neck broke. His legs drew up almost to his chin, then fell back limp. Yellow drops stained the snow under his feet.

  “There, you bastard!” Rebecca Cline’s father shouted. “Died pissing like a dog on a fireplug. Welcome to Hell.” A few people clapped.

  The spectators stayed until Trusdale’s corpse, still wearing the black hood, was laid in the same hurry-up wagon he’d ridden to town in. Then they dispersed.

  Barclay went back to the jail and sat in the cell Trusdale had occupied. He sat there for ten minutes. It was cold enough to see his breath. He knew what he was waiting for, and eventually it came. He picked up the small bucket that had held Trusdale’s last drink of beer and vomited. Then he went into his office and stoked up the stove.

  He was still there eight hours later, trying to read a book, when Abel Hines came in. He said, “You need to come down to the funeral parlor, Otis. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “What?”

  “No. You’ll want to see it for yourself.”

  They walked down to the Hines Funeral Parlor & Mortuary. In the back room, Trusdale lay naked on a cooling board. There was a smell of chemicals and shit.

  “They load their pants when they die that way,” Hines said. “Even men who go to it with their heads up. They can’t help it. The sphincter lets go.”

  “And?”

  “Step over here. I figure a man in your job has seen worse than a pair of shitty drawers.”

  They lay on the floor, mostly turned inside out. Something gleamed in the mess. Barclay leaned closer and saw it was a silver dollar. He reached down and plucked it from the crap.

  “I don’t understand it,” Hines said. “Son of a bitch was locked up a good long time.”

  There was a chair in the corner. Barclay sat down on it so heavily he made a little woof sound. “He must have swallowed it the first time when he saw our lanterns coming. And every time it came out he cleaned it off and swallowed it again.”

  The two men stared at each other.

  “You believed him,” Hines said at last.

  “Fool that I am, I did.”

  “Maybe that says more about you than it does about him.”

  “He went on saying he was innocent right to the end. He’ll most likely stand at the throne of God saying the same thing.”

  “Yes,” Hines said.

  “I don’t understand. He was going to hang. Either way, he was going to hang. Do you understand it?”

  “I don’t even understand why the sun comes up. What are you going to do with that cartwheel? Give it back to the girl’s mother and father? It might be better if you didn’t, because . . .” Hines shrugged.

  Because the Clines knew all along. Everyone in town knew all along. He was the only one who hadn’t known. Fool that he was.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” he said.

  The wind gusted, bringing the sound of singing. It was coming from the church. It was the Doxology.

  ELMORE LEONARD

  For Something to Do

  FROM Charlie Martz and Other Stories

  1955

  PAST HOWELL, HE kept the speedometer needle at seventy for almost six miles, until he was in sight of the mailbox. Then he eased his foot from the accelerator, braked, and turned off the highway onto the road that cut back through the trees. The road was little wider than his car, a dim, rutted passageway that twice climbed into small clearings, but through most of its quarter of a mile kept to tree-covered dimness until it opened onto the yard and the one-story white farmhouse. He left the car in the gravel drive and went in the side door. It was almost seven o’clock in the evening.

  “Ev?”

  He heard Julie’s voice and passed through the kitchen to see his wife at the end of the hall coming out of the bedroom. She went to him quickly, kissing him and holding herself against him for a moment before looking up.

  “I was starting to worry—”

  “They haven’t been here?” Evan asked.

  His wife’s hair, smooth dark, parted on the side and clipped with a silver barrette, hung almost to her shoulders, where it turned up softly and moved as she shook her head. She was twenty-three, with a slight, boyish figure, a perhaps too-thin face, though her features were delicately small and even, and with freckles she did not try to conceal because her husband liked them.

  “Did they call?” asked Evan.

  “Not a word since Cal telephoned this morning.”

  “If they left Detroit at two . . .” Evan paused. “Isn’t that what Cal said?”

  Julie nodded. “He was picking up Ray at two o’clock and coming right on.”

  “They would’ve been here three hours ago if he did.”

  She started to smile as she said, “Maybe they were in an accident.” In the dimness, but with light coming from the kitchen doorway, her teeth were small and white against the warm brown of her face.

  Evan smiled too, looking at his wife and feeling her close to him. “Thank God for small blessings.”

  “Or Cal forgot the way,” she said.

  “Or they stopped at a bar.”

  Her smile faded. “That’s all we’d need.” She followed Evan into the kitchen and leaned against the white-painted, oilcloth-covered table as he washed his hands at the sink. She liked to watch him as he lathered his hands vigorously, then rinsed them until the callused palms glistened yellow-pink and fresh-looking. She liked what she called his “honest farmer tan”: face and arms a deep brown, with a line across his forehead and upper arms where the color ended abruptly. She even liked his “farmer haircut,” with too much thinned out from the sides—just as he liked her freckles and the way her hair moved when she shook her head. They had been married less than a year and noticing and liking these things about one another were as important as anything they shared.

  “I was beginning to worry about you,” she said.

  “It took longer than I thought it would.”

  “A reluctant calf?”

  Evan nodded, drying his hands.

  “Did he pay you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He didn’t pay for the brucellosis shots either.”

  “He will, when he gets his wheat check.”

  “Eight miles both ways and I’ll bet he didn’t even thank you.”

  “He mumbled something.”

  “Ev, that’s a sixteen-mile round trip . . . and a messy afternoon in his barn. For what? Eight or nine dollars.”

  He looked at her curiously. “That wasn’t a child I delivered, it was a calf.”

  “Four years of veterinary medicine to charge eight dollars—”

  “Twenty-five. I had to cut.”

  “It’s still too little, with the attention you give.”

  “Do you expect him to pay m
ore than the calf’s worth?”

  She shook her head faintly. “Good Sam.”

  He frowned, moving toward her. “Julie, what’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You sound like Cal, talking about money like that.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  For a moment Evan was silent. “You’re upset about them coming, aren’t you?” He was standing close to her now, and he drew her against him gently. “All of a sudden you sound like a different person. Listen, don’t let him get you down like that.”

  She closed her eyes, her arms going around his waist. “I was afraid they’d come while you were gone. Then I hoped they would because I didn’t want you to be here.”

  “The worrier.”

  “Ev, this isn’t like the little worries. First I thought, It’s better if you and Ray don’t meet. Then I thought, No, I don’t want to be here alone. And I wasn’t sure which would be worse.”

  “Julie, Ray knows you’re married.”

  “That’s just it.”

  “But you went with the guy for two years. He can’t be that bad.”

  “He was hard to get along with and conceited and . . . I don’t know. I can’t even think of one thing in his favor.”

  “Well, maybe he’s grown up.”

  “I think that would be asking too much,” Julie said.

  They spoke little during supper.

  Julie thought of Ray Perris. She had gone with him during her senior year in high school and off and on during her first two years at Michigan State, whenever she came home to Detroit and Ray bothered to call her. Then, in her third year, shortly after Ray was called into the army, she met Evan. There was no formal breakup with Ray, no ring to return, no goodbye. Ray never wrote, only once called her when he was home on furlough; and as far as Julie knew, Ray was still unaware that she was married. Until now. Not long ago she’d heard that Ray was out of the army and had become a professional fighter. This didn’t surprise her. He had entered the Golden Gloves in high school, but, it seemed to Julie, more for the sake of wanting to be known as a fighter than for the actual boxing. Since meeting Evan, the only time she thought of Ray was to wonder how she could have ever gone with him. Perhaps only because she had been seventeen.

  Then the phone call this morning from Cal, her cousin. Ray was in Detroit and he was bringing him out. And from that moment, suddenly realizing she was going to see Ray again and not wanting to see him, she was afraid.

  Evan thought about Cal. How he would pull up into the drive unexpectedly, uninvited, and sit in the living room with them until all the beer was gone. Cal was twenty-three, Julie’s age, four years younger than Evan; but aside from that they had almost nothing in common.

  The first few times he came, Evan tried hard to like him. He offered to show him around the farm, but Cal wasn’t interested. For conversation he brought up the Detroit Tigers, Lions, and Red Wings, in that order, going from baseball to football to hockey. But Cal was a fight fan, and Evan was familiar with few names, none of them current, in the boxing world.

  Cal did talk. After a few cans of beer he carried the conversation and invariably his remarks were directed to Julie.

  Why would anybody who knew better want to live in the sticks? I mean what do you do for kicks, sit and look at each other? Nothing to do, you work your francis off and all you got to show for it is a one-story house and a four-year-old car. If Ev wants to be a vet—I mean it takes all kinds of people, believe me—why don’t he get one of those dog and cat deals? Plenty of them in Detroit and those guys are making dough.

  Evan argued with him mildly the first few times, but when he realized his anger was rising he would stop. It wasn’t worth it. Cal had more success with Julie. She was easily drawn into an argument, as if she were obligated to talk some sense into Cal, to make him see that living on a farm and not making much money didn’t necessarily mean you weren’t happy. And when she became angry, Evan would see Cal smile. A number of times he had to restrain himself from throwing Cal out bodily.

  Evan would tell himself, The next time he opens his mouth, out he goes. Even if he is her cousin. But he sat quietly and put up with Cal, because he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.

  But it’s not the same now, Evan thought. It’s nice to be nice, but you can carry it too far.

  He thought then, You’re feeling sorry for yourself.

  But that wasn’t it, for he was almost always completely honest with himself. He was thinking that he and Julie had been married for almost a year and everything was going smoothly, but for one moment this afternoon his wife had sounded like Cal and she had not even been aware of it.

  You did not let a man ruin your marriage or even try to or begin to or even have it remotely in mind. That, you did something about.

  They had eaten supper and were doing the dishes when the two-tone ivory-and-green station wagon swung onto the drive and came to a sudden, gravel-skidding, nose-down stop behind Evan’s car. The horn blew, and kept blowing until Julie and Evan came out on the front porch.

  They heard Cal’s voice as he got out of the station wagon, almost stumbling, slamming the door, and Julie closed her eyes. When she opened them he was coming toward the porch. “We were starting to worry about you.”

  Cal winked at Evan as if they were old friends. “That’s the day.”

  “What happened to you?” Julie’s gaze went to the station wagon as she spoke. The curved windshield was green-tinted and she could not make out the figure behind the wheel, though she was certain it was Ray Perris.

  “We stopped for some hunting,” Cal answered. “Ray figured if we’re going out in the woods let’s have some fun. So you know what the punchy guy does? He stops at a hardware store and buys two .30-30s.” Cal snapped his fingers. “Just like that. The guy’s loaded.”

  “You stopped for more than that,” Julie said.

  “So we picked up a case of beer.”

  Evan watched him. Cal stood with his hands on his hips, one blunt-toed cordovan shoe in front of and almost perpendicular to the other in a fencinglike pose. “You’re a little early for the hunting season,” Evan said.

  Cal looked up at him. “Is that right, doctor?”

  “What were you hunting?”

  “I don’t know. What lives in the woods?”

  Don’t let him get you, Evan thought, and he said, nodding to the station wagon, “What about your friend?”

  “He’s a shy guy.” Cal grinned. “Waits to be invited.” His eyes went to Julie. “Ask your old boyfriend in for a beer.”

  “I think you’ve already had enough.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You could hardly get out of the car.”

  “Is that right?” Cal turned to the station wagon. “Ray, we’re going to get a drunkometer test!”

  “Cal, act right today, please!”

  They heard the car door open and slam closed. Cal said, “There’s a real bomb. Two hundred and thirty horses. Digs out from zero to sixty in ten flat. Something?”

  Neither Julie nor Evan answered. They were watching Ray Perris rounding the back end of the station wagon, taking his time, his hands in the back pockets of his khaki pants.

  He wore a tight-fitting short-sleeved yellow-and-white sport shirt, and both of his forearms bore tattoos: a tombstone with the inscription IN MEMORY OF MOTHER on the right arm, and on the left a dagger with RAY in ornate, serifed letters on the hilt. Air Corps–type sunglasses covered his eyes (though the sun was off behind the trees and it was almost dark), and his dark hair, curling low on his forehead, was thick and combed straight back on the sides. At the nape of his neck his hair ended abruptly in a straight line.

  Cal scratched idly about his shirtfront. He was hatless, with light-colored hair that was crewcut on top and long on the sides, and his entire face, pale and angular, seemed creased as he smiled.

  “Ray’s next fight’s in Saginaw,” Cal said. “So he figured, he
ll, train at home for a change.”

  Perris nodded. “Besides wanting to see Julie.” He was staring at her, ignoring Evan.

  She tried to smile. “It’s nice to see you, Ray. I don’t believe you’ve met my husband—”

  It was Evan’s turn to smile, but his mouth was set firmly and his expression didn’t change as he extended his hand and almost drew it back before Perris eased his from his back pocket.

  “Cal said you were hunting,” Julie said to him.

  “We shot sixteen beer cans.”

  “You should’ve had Ev with you.” Julie stopped. “I mean, if it was the season. Ev was practically born in the woods—hunts every year, sets traps in the winter.” She watched them shake hands briefly.

  As they did, Cal said, “Like in the ring, huh, man?”

  Perris’s hands went to his back pockets again and he stood hip-cocked, looking at Julie. “This cousin of yours, all he wants to talk about is fights.”

  “He’s already notched twenty-three wins,” Cal said. “Only lost four and drawed one. Another year and he’s in line for a shot at the middleweight title. How about that?” Cal paused. “You know what they call him around the gym? Tony.”

  “Tony?” Julie said.

  “Tony Curtis! You don’t see it?”

  Julie nodded, not sure if he was serious. “There’s some resemblance.”

  “Some—hell, he looks like his twin!”

  Perris was studying the house. His gaze moved to the chicken house and, beyond that, the barn. His eyes returned to Julie as he said, “How much land you got?”

  “Eighty-five acres, most of it wheat. Some corn. Of course Ev doesn’t have time to work it all now, with his practice. A neighbor sharecrops it for us.”

  “How much money does this Ev make?”

  The question startled her and she hesitated before saying, “We get along fine.”

  “He makes about four thousand a year,” Cal said. “Tops.”

  Perris grinned. “I can lose and make that in one night. Honey, if all you got out of school was him, you should’ve stayed home.”